Eating at Chili's in Cairo

Six days after I turned 14, Christmas came. That one I remember well because it felt a little rotten. 28-year-old me wants to tell 14-year-old me that that Christmas itself was pretty normal, and it was ME who was rotten, but we all are pouty for a bit, and that was my bit.

The world became decidedly less rotten a few days after Christmas, though: my parents called me into their room late at night (looking back, it was probably 9p) and handed me Microsoft Publisher's finest -- a scroll printed on parchment in HEIROGLYPHICS for me to decode. If you knew me at the time, you knew that my life's goal was to become a badass archeologist with a Jeep and two Rottweilers and a closet full of khaki, so (unlike at Christmas) my parents were seriously speaking my language. 

It was an invitation on a trip, but really, it was an invitation to let the world become small.

I stepped through that first customs booth in the Cairo airport like I have stepped through many since, to find that on the other side was a world I didn't know yet. One that, if I was able to see beneath and beyond and between the cracks, would teach me to see more clearly in the one that I did know.

Our trip to Cairo blew my mind. We climbed minarets, rode the obligatory pyramid camels, rollerbladed through Heliopolis and drank Turkish coffee. I was angered and inspired and more than anything: completely amazed.

On our last day in Cairo, we ate at Chili's.

25-year-old Hanna had strong opinions about what this implied, the Westernization and degradation of culture and yada yada yada, but present-day me loves that we did it. We ordered Southwestern Eggrolls and sat in booths that could have been in Austin or Ashburn or Boerne or Burke, under framed photos of Texas Chili Cookoffs filled with '80s hair and cutoff jeans. Beside us were hookah-smokers and hijab-wearers, and we flipped coasters off the table and just laughed and laughed at the irony of it all.

Looking back, it's so obvious: every new place we go is just a backdrop, a setting to experience life in. To de-mystify the universe and thus actually taste it, to glorify the little things and then realize they're the truest ones -- these are some of the ways to shrink the world smaller. 

People mean different things when they say the world is small, but to me, it means there's enough room for as much as we can each let in. The more we let in, the smaller it gets, but the richer it tastes. Friends laugh and cry around tables and living rooms and sidewalk cafés in any city (and I feel lucky to have laughed and cried in some killer cities), and when memories are attached to a million spots, the world (and it's customs halls) becomes your backyard. And you can't help but see your old normal with new eyes.

So, thanks, Mom and Dad, for a lousy 14-year-old Christmas that ended in you taking me to Chili's. In Cairo. Because to me, now every Chili's is sweaty, beautiful Cairo -- and every unknown place is a laugh-filled dinner waiting to be unlocked.